India´s elite educational institutions have been producing the
first-rate scientists, engineers, and managers who helped India´s
information technology sector take off during the 1990s. Far less visible
is the more recent, quiet revolution in India´s elementary education
that, if successful, will equip an entire younger generation with skills
to improve productivity and reduce the burden of disease, high birth rates,
hunger, and poverty, while changing societal attitudes toward gender,
caste, tribe, and disability.

What India has accomplished is no small feat—especially given that
its population grew from about 840 million to nearly one billion between
1991 and 2001, with the number of children age 6 to 14 rising by 35 million
to 205 million. Over roughly the same period, the gross enrollment ratio
(GER) in primary education (grades 1) rose from 82 percent to 95 percent,
and in upper primary education (grades 6) from 54 percent to 61 percent
(see table). Available government data suggest that in that age group,
the number of children not in school fell sharply from about 60 million
in the early 1990s to 25 million in 2002, and this decline is continuing.
While specific numbers in such a large federal system may be viewed with
caution, the rough magnitude of the progress appears to be in little doubt.

Educating
the masses
After primary education was made a national priority, enrollment—especially
for girls—showed dramatic gains.

Tertiary education (postsecondary to postgraduate for ages
19-24)
Total gross enrollment ratios
Among boys
Among girls

82
90
73

54
62
45

32
39
24

5.3
6.8
3.6

95
98
93

61
65
56

36
39
30

9
10.3
7.5

(percent
of GDP)

Total
public spending on education and training
Total public spending on elementary education and training

3.6

1.7

4.1

2.1

(dollars)

Public
spending per elementary student
(constant 2002 prices)

25

44

Sources:
Data from India´s Ministries of Human Resource Development
and Finance; and World Bank estimates.

1Gross enrollment is the ratio of the number
of children enrolled in primary education, regardless of age, to
the population of the age group that corresponds to the nationally
defined ages for primary schooling. A gross enrollment ratio in
excess of 100 percent typically reflects the inclusion of underage
as well as overage students who have entered school late or repeated
grades.

The expansion of primary education—driven by major policy changes
along with higher demand for schooling stemming from economic growth and
globalization—took hold all across India. Historically, India´s
southern and western states had always been far ahead in education of
the large northern states, which accounted for most of the out-of-school
children. Over the past decade, however, many poorly performing states
began to make real overall advances—the primary GERs in Rajasthan,
Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh were well over 90 percent, although
the ratio remained at 74 percent in Bihar. The southern states, the states
on the east and west coasts, the Himalayan states, and the northeastern
states—except for Assam and Nagaland—were either approaching
universal primary enrollment or had already achieved it. Increased access
for girls and children of disadvantaged groups accounted for much of the
improvement. The overall GER for girls was 92 percent and over 95 percent
for children of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes—the most disadvantaged
groups, which make up 18 and 9 percent, respectively, of all primary school-age
children.

Given the momentum built up over the years, India will, in all likelihood,
meet the education Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary
education—which calls for all children of primary school age to
participate in the school system and complete primary school. This article
explores India´s quiet revolution.

From elites to all

India´s education development since independence can be divided
into three phases.

Phase 1: Educating the elites to build national capacity.
From independence in 1947 through 1986, education policy emphasized building
national capacity for self-government and self-sufficiency through elite
education. The states were mainly responsible for financing and providing
education, which led to mixed results as commitment varied between states.
Initially severely constrained, public spending for education rose from
below 1 percent of GDP in 1950 to 3.4 percent in 1986.

Phase 2: Making primary education a national priority.
In 1986, the government of India (known as the Union Government) launched
the landmark National Policy on Education, which resulted in a series
of pilot projects on a large scale. Following the World Conference on
Education for All in 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, India opened up to external
assistance for primary education. The most extensive external partnership,
involving the World Bank, the United Kingdom, the European Commission
(EC), the Netherlands, and UNICEF, was the District Primary Education
Program in 18 large states, covering about half of India´s 600 districts
with low female literacy rates. The program created active partnerships
between the government and civil society organizations and strengthened
coordination in the areas of planning, training, and research. Financial
management and procurement systems, procedures, and checks and balances
have been put in place, making it possible to scale up in the next phase.

Between 1993 and 2002, total public spending on education rose steadily
from 3.6 to 4.1 percent of GDP, higher than the average spending of 3
percent of GDP among low-income countries. Elementary education expenditure
rose from 1.7 to 2.1 percent of GDP, accounting for over 60 percent of
the growth in public expenditure on education in this period. As the economy
grew about 6 percent annually over this period, resources increased in
both relative and absolute terms and spending per elementary student rose
from $25 to $44 despite higher enrollment. The Union Government´s
share of total public expenditure on education rose to about 15 percent,
with the states covering the remainder (see chart).

Phase 3: Universalizing elementary education. In 2001,
India launched the National Program of Universal Elementary Education,
known in Hindi as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), and amended its
constitution to make quality elementary education a fundamental right
of every child. The program is designed so that by 2007, all children,
including children with disabilities, will have completed primary schooling,
and by 2010, upper primary schooling—a much stiffer requirement
than the MDG of universal completion of primary education by 2015.

The SSA program combines centrally set targets and norms for planning
and costing with decentralized management, bottom up planning, community
mobilization, and social audits. With the Union Government contributing
75 percent and the states 25 percent, SSA funds annual work plans submitted
by states and districts to meet the targets. To ensure that central funds
are not used to substitute state spending, SSA obliges the states to maintain
spending for elementary education in real terms at the 1999 level and
to match growing central funds above this level. The expected incremental
SSA cost of $3.5 billion for 2004 would add another 9 percent per year
to the total resources for elementary education. Three external partners
(the World Bank, the United Kingdom, and the EC) contribute $1.05 billion
to the Union Government´s share.

SSA finances civil works, salaries for additional teachers, alternative
schools in sparsely populated areas, bridge courses for dropouts, innovations,
teacher training, school and teacher grants, and community-based organizations
to provide on-site support. To tackle gender and social inequalities,
SSA subsidizes the cost of providing free textbooks to all girls and all
students of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, special facilities for girls
(such as early childhood education centers for alternative sibling care
and girls´ toilets), and grants to districts to support students
with disabilities. SSA also funds a national component for capacity building,
technical support, monitoring and evaluation, financial management, dissemination
of good practices, and media campaigns.

The program is designed to emphasize participation, transparency, and
public accountability. It requires that every state take a baseline household
census of children to ascertain their age, gender, social, and education
status. Once the Project Approval Board agrees to the states´ and
districts´ annual work plans, funds are released to the states for
implementation. The funds are overwhelmingly spent at the community level,
and their sources and uses at the school level are required to be posted
publicly.

Since its 2001 launch, SSA has focused its efforts—with initial
signs of success—on enrolling children who have never enrolled and
in bringing dropouts back to school, while at the same time taking in
new age groups and improving the quality of educational inputs. SSA is
complemented by another national program, the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, that
provides daily school meals to all primary school students, thereby providing
not only the needed nutrition but also incentives for poor children to
enroll in and complete school. SSA enjoys nonpartisan political backing,
as evidenced by major budget increases under both the present and previous
Union Governments. The Prime Minister of India is the Chair of SSA´s
National Mission, ensuring the highest-level attention.

Risks and challenges

As India has vastly expanded enrollment, it now needs to reduce high
teacher and student absenteeism, lower repetition and dropout rates, and
improve student achievement. In 2002, an early assessment of public school
student achievement in grade 5 suggested huge differences within and across
states. India tends to reward rote learning, and there are no international
benchmarks for judging education standards. At the national level, periodic
assessments of student achievement are planned. It is vital that the test
instruments be valid, reliable, and well designed. Participation in international
comparative assessments should be used to improve and strengthen the technical
capacity for measuring quality. Some states are taking steps to focus
on quality. Madhya Pradesh has a system of tracking each child´s
achievement in each subject for diagnosis, remedial education, and teacher
training, and the results of statewide examinations at the end of grades
5 and 8 are reported to the state legislature, putting the focus on learning
outcomes.

Meanwhile, sustaining improvement in the teaching and
learning process, increasing the time-on-tasks, and devising specific
strategies to address special needs are essential. Multigrade classrooms,
common in rural areas, require far more learning materials and teachers
than are currently provided. With 17 official languages and more than
300 spoken languages and dialects in India, tribal children need help
to overcome language barriers.

Lessons for others?

Could India´s experience help guide other countries striving to
reach universal primary education? Five lessons come to mind.

First, successive Union Governments have provided strong leadership in
defining national goals and setting time-bound targets—elimination
of gender inequities, full participation of disadvantaged groups, universal
completion of elementary education, and establishment of minimum standards
for inputs across and within states.

Second, to advance these national goals, India´s Union Government—aided
in part by external assistance—not only sustains massive transfers
of resources but also requires the states to commit resources to meet
the goals through the matching fund mechanism.

Fourth, investment in school meals has raised enrollment and helped retention,
while providing much needed nutrition to poor children.

Fifth, substantial efforts were put into institutional development and
capacity building while the education program was rapidly expanded. This
approach provides room for innovations (such as the provision of alternative
schools, which brought flexibility to a rigid system, and the use of community-based
teachers) and enables successful models to be developed for large-scale
implementation.

Kin Bing Wu
is the Lead Education Specialist, Venita Kaul is a Senior Education
Specialist, and Deepa Sankar is an Education Economist in the
World Bank´s South Asia Human Development Department. Wu and
Kaul are co-task team leaders of the World Bank project supporting
SSA.